Saturday, February 23, 2013

The true scale of Britain's involvement in the slave trade has been laid bare in documents revealing how the country's wealthiest families received the modern equivalent of billions of pounds in compensation after slavery was abolished.

The previously unseen records show exactly who received what in payouts from the Government when slave ownership was abolished by Britain – much to the potential embarrassment of their descendants. Dr Nick Draper from University College London, who has studied the compensation papers, says as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons derived all or part of their fortunes from the slave economy.

As a result, there are now wealthy families all around the UK still indirectly enjoying the proceeds of slavery where it has been passed on to them. Dr Draper said: "There was a feeding frenzy around the compensation." A John Austin, for instance, owned 415 slaves, and got compensation of £20,511, a sum worth nearly £17m today. And there were many who received far more.

On the whole I'm a fan of the European Commission's economic assessments, which unlike the politicians who run the show, tend to be both impartial and realistic. The latest winter forecasts, published today, will have come as quite a shock to the high command, for they predict another year of recession and rising unemployment for the eurozone, and only feeble growth of just 1.4pc the year after (2014).

The upshot is that little progress will be made this year in bringing budget deficits down as a percentage of GDP among the euro area's weaker economies, while for a number of countries, the goal of reduced public indebtedness remains as far away as ever. For the next two years at least, public indebtedness will continue to climb across most eurozone member states. Government targets for reducing budget deficits are likely to be be missed, both this year and next, not just in weaker member states covered by the support programme, but also in a number of larger eurozone economies.

As you would expect, the Commission diplomatically tip-toes around the issue of whether enforced fiscal consolidation may itself be causing these shortfalls, and can therefore be regarded as entirely counter-productive, but it does at least concede that fiscal consolidation is weighing quite heavily on growth prospects.

Deficit-busting targets for a trio of eurozone strugglers have been torpedoed by austerity and the region will not return to growth until next year, worrying new forecasts revealed today.

The European Commission’s latest forecasts predict the 17-member single currency bloc, the UK’s biggest trading partner, is on course for another year stuck in reverse, with a 0.3% decline in 2013 following a 0.6% fall last year.

Spain, where unemployment is set to hit a record 26.9% this year, is the worst offender on deficits as the economy buckles under Mariano Rajoy’s austerity programme.

THE UK is "going beyond EU directives" in offering reduced VAT on the supply and installation of energy-saving materials, according to the European Commission.

As such, the commission has referred the UK to the European Court of Justice.

Under EU VAT rules, member states may apply reduced VAT rates to the supply of goods and services used in the housing sector, as long as it is part of a social policy. However, by allowing a reduced VAT rate on all energy saving materials, the UK is going beyond the scope of what is permitted under EU law, the commission said.

The MV Lyubov Orlova, which vanished en route to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped, has been spotted near the west coast of Ireland. The ghostly liner disappeared two years ago as it was being towed to the Caribbean to be scrapped. The sighting 1,300 nautical miles from the Irish coast was reported by an intelligence agency using satellite imagery to create maps for the U.S. government.

A Michigan man came home Wednesday evening to find his wife had been stabbed to death and their 'psychotic' 19-year-old son is charged with her murder.

David Kellen Grow was arraigned Thursday on an open murder count in Jackson County District Court for accusations that he used a knife to kill his mother, 49-year-old Robin Denise Grow, in their Concord home.

The 19-year-old's parents had hospitalized him for mental instability for 10 days in January until a judge ordered that he be released against his parents wishes. It was 23 days later that he allegedly murdered his mother.

The evidence gathered during an inquiry by former Sky News chief Nick Pollard (bottom right) into Newsnight's decision to drop its Jimmy Savile sex abuse investigation was published today by the BBC in a bid to be 'open and transparent'. But Tory peer Lord McAlpine said too much evidence had been redacted in the release and added that 'the BBC is not the Secret Service'.

Royston Frost, 72, right, is angry and ashamed of his daughter, Heather, pictured with her 11 children, who lives off the state in a six-bedroom house. He confesses that even he doesn't know the identity of the fathers of two of his daughter's 11 children. 'I didn't tell my daughter to have 11 kids,' he says. 'I tried to stop her at five, but you can't tell someone in their 20s what to do.The house, which is still a few months off completion, has six bedrooms, three bathrooms and a huge living/dining area, ideal for entertaining.

New England braced for its third snowstorm in three weekends on Saturday, putting crews to work sanding roads and trimming trees ahead of the snow, sleet and freezing rain moving in from the Midwest.

The storm blanketed states from Minnesota to Ohio earlier this week, dumping more than a foot of snow in Kansas on Thursday, forcing airports to cancel hundreds of flights and leaving motorists stranded on highways.

North Korea on Sunday warned the top U.S. military commander stationed in South Korea that his forces would "meet a miserable destruction" if they go ahead with scheduled military drills with South Korean troops, North Korean state media said.

Pak Rim-su, chief delegate of the North Korean military mission to the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, gave the message by phone to Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, KCNA news agency said.

It came amid escalating tension on the divided Korean peninsula after the North's third nuclear test earlier this month, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, drew harsh international condemnation.

A direct message from the North's Panmunjom mission to the U.S. commander is rare.

The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, and his Nato counterparts are considering leaving 8,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but a dispute arose on Friday between the US and Germany over whether the force would be international or purely American.

The conflicting accounts came as Nato defence ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss the endgame of the 11-year-old war. Barack Obama has said the last foreign combat troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The German defence minister, Thomas de Maizière, told reporters Panetta had told him at the meeting that the US would leave 8,000-10,000 troops in the country at the end of 2014. But Panetta, speaking to reporters later, called De Maizière's comments inaccurate.

Britain was stripped of its AAA-rated debt status for the first time ever on Friday night in a move that puts pressure on George Osborne, who had pledged to use his austerity measures to protect the rating.

The chancellor, who had 12 hours' notice of the decision by Moody's ratings agency, insisted he would stick to his course and had "redoubled" his resolve to tackle Britain's financial problems. However, the downgrading will have major political implications for the coalition.

The nation's political leaders are once again under pressure to find a solution to the asylum seeker impasse after it was reported the dead bodies of refugees had been thrown overboard in a two-month ordeal at sea.

Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor has urged the coalition to re-think its opposition to the Malaysia Solution after 98 Burmese refugees died at sea.

Sri Lankan police say they were told by refugees that the people died of dehydration and starvation after their boat's engine cut out at sea.

A teenage boy has reportedly died after being sucked down a drainpipe while he was collecting golf balls in floodwaters.

The body of Luke O’Neill, 17, was found by his friend while he was scouring reeds near the exit of the drain at the Kew Country Club in New South Wales, Australia, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Police said Luke was in waist-deep water scooping golf balls with some friends when he was suddenly dragged into large drainpipe by the force of the water.